


Marigolds and Forget-me-nots

by Worthless_Nepenthes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Evil Author Day, Evil Author Day 2020, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Work Up For Adoption, unfinished work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Worthless_Nepenthes/pseuds/Worthless_Nepenthes
Summary: True love is dangerous. It will kill you. Puts you on a time limit, like a deadlier, more painful beauty and the beast. Once you’ve fallen in love, you best hope your love is returned. The forget-me-nots are coughed up like the others, but they also plant roots in your lungs. Metaphysically, anyway. It will still kill you, even if they don’t show to doctors or anything else. You can try to kill your love before this point if you think it will not be returned, if you are still at the honey flower stage, the pure and secret love stage. Get some distance, think of anything and everything but that person, perhaps you can keep yourself from love. But once the first forget-me-not has crossed your lips, the love must either be returned or you die.My fic for Evil Author Day 2020. Stiles has Hanahaki disease, but it is more of a family curse. This snippet includes  journal entry by Claudia talking about the effects of the curse, and a bit of Stiles’ childhood with it. Just world building. There is no pairing so far in the fic, but I tagged it with what pairings I was trying to decide between. This is an unfinished work, with no ideas of if or when it will be continued. There is no cliffhanger in this.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski/?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Marigolds and Forget-me-nots

**Author's Note:**

> This was veeeery slightly inspired by rayshippouuchiha’s ‘the sharpness of blooms’, but only insofar as they both have permanent flowers vs dissolving flowers, so I’m not going to link it.
> 
> I have so much head canon on how this curse/disease works in this AU, feel free to ask questions.

_Every relationship change is heralded by flowers. Running into someone on the streets does nothing, even if it’s your one true love. Making a friend or an enemy, something more important than playing together once in the sandbox or having someone trip you in the lunchroom, those give you fleeting flowers that quickly turn to dust. But the life changing relationships give you a permanent flower, symbolizing the permanent effect on your life, even if it’s not something you consciously realize yet. But the flowers aren’t dangerous in and of themselves._

_Except for love. True love, selfless love,_ I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine _, it is dangerous. It starts as a warning, coughing flowers more frequently, something more intense than a crush’s passion or hope or adoration, orange roses or snowdrops or red trillium. It starts turning into yellow tulips and acacias, hopeless and secret love. Then forget-me-nots. True love._

_True love is dangerous. It will kill you. Puts you on a time limit, like a deadlier, more painful beauty and the beast. Once you’ve fallen in love, you best hope your love is returned. The forget-me-nots are coughed up like the others, but they also plant roots in your lungs. Metaphysically, anyway. It will still kill you, even if they don’t show to doctors or anything else. You can try to kill your love before this point if you think it will not be returned, if you are still at the honey flower stage, the pure and secret love stage. Get some distance, think of anything and everything but that person, perhaps you can keep yourself from love. But once the first forget-me-not has crossed your lips, the love must either be returned or you die._

_The other flowers, most of them are fleeting, turning to dust as quickly as they were coughed up. They come without pain and leave as easily. Deeper relationships give more permanent blossoms, perhaps rendered in wood or metal. These are harder to cough up, but act as a symbol of the more permanent relationship they are. Forget-me-nots, however, are just flowers, but they ache to cough up, and they don’t disappear. Eventually they come with blood, and at the end, if love isn’t returned, you have a day or two of primroses, a lovely indicator of a dark truth—I can’t live without you. Then you suffocate. I can’t tell you how long you’ll have, Mischief, because it has been different for everyone in the family who has come to this point, but—no longer than a year, no less than a month._

Stiles slams the journal shut. That was the last page with writing on it. The earlier pages were just filled with flower meanings and sketches of the more uncommon flowers, the writing getting worse and worse until that last entry, almost illegible. He sets it to the side of his desk and sighs, running his hands through his hair. He knew the journal by heart, could hear his mother’s voice telling him stories when he was younger, caution tales warning of the dangers of falling in love. ‘Make all the friends you want, Mischief, but only fall in love with someone who loves you first.’

 _Thanks mom,_ he thinks wryly, _I just wish you could have told me how to guard myself a bit better._

He remembers meeting Scott for the first time in kindergarten, or at least remembers being told of the meeting, charging over to where Jackson was making fun of the tan boy for coughing all the time and not being able to run around during recess and gym. 

~  
“Hi! My name’s Stiles and I cough a lot too so we can play together and be best friends and then you’ll be way better than this meanie who doesn’t even have friends!” 

Scott blinked at him for a second, then smiled widely. “Sure!” 

That had been the start of a great friendship—no, a _broship_ —and an enemy. A week later, chattering excitedly to his mother about his best friend and the meanie who kept picking on them, and he coughed up his first flowers. “Coltsfoot and ivy, justice and friendship,” Claudia said fondly. “Even at five, you’re so much like your father. I had St. John’s Wort.”

“What’s that one, Mommy?” 

“Animosity. It’s like...fighting, or arguing. But you, little Mischief, just want the right thing done. And on that note! You are much too smart to keep getting into these fights. Get back at Jackson in a smarter way than pushing him down.”

“Yes Mama!”

“And Mischief? Don’t tell your friends about the flowers, okay? They are a family secret.”

“Yes Mama.”  
~

Time passed and he became real best friends with Scott, coughing up the wooden geranium to prove it. Jackson was annoying, but never enough to get a permanent flower. Claudia warned Stiles, over and over, that he could have friends as much as he wanted, but not to fall in love, not to get a crush on anyone unless they liked him first. It was too dangerous. So he just spent time with Scott. One friend was enough, and he was never going to fall in love with Scott. Scott was his brother. 

When Stiles was eight, his mother became ill. When Stiles was nine, his mother died. He coughed up more flowers that year than any other, before or since. It started with dead leaves and variegated pinks, sadness and refusal to give up. It moved to helenium and yew, tears and sorrow, and near the end, during a terrifying time after which he couldn’t see his mother unsupervised anymore, snakesfoot and hemlock, horror and a fear that she would kill him. He had to read the journal his mother was writing him to figure out the meaning of these flowers. His mother hadn’t told him the bad ones yet, only the happy ones. He cried and coughed up more helenium and yew for years after when he read the journal. 

His final flower for his mother, after lamentation and grief and sorrow, was an entire strand of green locust tree blossoms, delicately crafted out of metal and glass, but unbreakable. He hung it by his mother’s gravestone as a wind chime, so she would know he would always love her, even now that she was dead and after everything that happened. 

After Stiles’ mother passed, he changed a bit. His mother’s warnings about unreciprocated love causing death hit a little harder than before, now that he understood death better. He could see his father fading, and took it upon himself to help as best he could. His father might not have to worry about flowers in his lungs, but drinking for a lost love could kill as easily. Stiles learned how to cook easy meals, did his best to clean around the house, and snuck around pouring out his dad’s drinks. It was hard but worth it to not lose another parent. After a few months the sheriff straightened up and started acting more like a father, but the damage to their relationship was already done. 

Stiles decided he wasn’t going to fall in love, and he didn’t want anyone to fall for him either. His ADHD, along with the new anxiety and panic attacks caused by his mother’s illness and death, helped him push away people. Stiles also developed a “crush” on Lydia Martin, a smart and pretty redhead that spent time with Jackson. He figured this meant she was mean too, and he wouldn’t ever have to worry about actually falling for her or she for him. He lived his life from the time of his mother’s death lightly, making no real connections with anyone besides Scott and his dad, and only those two because he already had. Stiles was determined to never have to cough up permanent flowers again. 

And then werewolves happened. And like everything in his life since that night, his emotions were more intense, coughing up more and more permanent flowers—the night Scott was bitten, the night Lydia was bitten, the time he was offered the bite and the time he tossed a Molotov, the time he held Derek up in the pool, the time he was kidnapped by an old man, the time he sacrificed himself for his father, the time—he could list examples after countless examples, he could pull the box from under his bed with the numerous physical reminders of the flowers he has coughed up, but now—now it was worse. 

They weren’t permanent flowers, in the sense that they weren’t glass or metal or wood—they were love flowers. They wouldn’t dissolve into dust like the others. They acted like actual flowers. They were a herald of worse to come, if he didn’t manage to fall out of love or get the person to fall for him. These had taken root in his lungs, and blossomed from the love he had tried to hide within himself. They weren’t permanent flowers—but they heralded a permanent change: love, or death.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no plans on writing more for this at this time. If you want to take this and write more or your own version, feel free, but please let me know. I just got stuck and couldn’t really come up with more, and it’s been sitting in drafts for a couple years. 
> 
> Please do not comment with requests for more or to continue, because I have tried and failed.  
> Please do comment to point out any errors I have made, or any other remarks you want to make or questions you have. I have a bunch of head canon and research I have done for this.


End file.
